I think they should for a lot of reasons. I've seen divers here in Puget Sound. Even as hard as we work to instill good buoyancy and stability in our students, four open water dives is not enough to solidify those skills. Many other divers were never really introduced to them. Diving is more fun if you are better at it and it is less work.
There is a lot of information out there to make diving easier and safer. Gas management is one of those topics. The additional education of a Nitrox class is also useful, if for no other reason than to go back over concepts related to decompression, depth, and ascent strategies.
Many environments reward non-silting propulsion techniques.
Rescue raises the diver's awareness of AVOIDING accidents, as well as making a diver more aware of options for handling them. And if you dive long enough, you WILL encounter a diver in distress (I've been involved in three in nine years).
Learning more about the animals where you dive can fabulously enrich your experience of being underwater. The friends I have who have dived for years and still say, "I dunno what kind of fish that was," fascinate me. It's so much more fun if you know who you're visiting, and why they are behaving the way they are!
And yes, you can learn all that stuff without a class, but classes organize material, make sure it's complete, and can be fun social experiences, too.
Not all my con-ed was great value for money, but as I learned more about how to choose classes and instructors, it got to be more so. I haven't taken anything but great classes in years (and they haven't all been GUE, either!).
There is a lot of information out there to make diving easier and safer. Gas management is one of those topics. The additional education of a Nitrox class is also useful, if for no other reason than to go back over concepts related to decompression, depth, and ascent strategies.
Many environments reward non-silting propulsion techniques.
Rescue raises the diver's awareness of AVOIDING accidents, as well as making a diver more aware of options for handling them. And if you dive long enough, you WILL encounter a diver in distress (I've been involved in three in nine years).
Learning more about the animals where you dive can fabulously enrich your experience of being underwater. The friends I have who have dived for years and still say, "I dunno what kind of fish that was," fascinate me. It's so much more fun if you know who you're visiting, and why they are behaving the way they are!
And yes, you can learn all that stuff without a class, but classes organize material, make sure it's complete, and can be fun social experiences, too.
Not all my con-ed was great value for money, but as I learned more about how to choose classes and instructors, it got to be more so. I haven't taken anything but great classes in years (and they haven't all been GUE, either!).